


As A Child Sleeps

by theskywasblue



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Old Wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-07
Updated: 2010-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:28:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hakkai learns the nature of Gojyo's forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As A Child Sleeps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sharpeslass](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sharpeslass).



“Well," Hakkai kept his voice deadpan, hardly thinking about what he is saying, "I imagine that sort of thing would be easy for someone like you.”

Total silence. Gojyo fixed Hakkai with a look that was normally followed but the words _What the fuck?_. Dokugakuji held his beer to his lips for a very long moment and then set it down carefully on the table.

“People like what, exactly?”

There was a small part of Hakkai’s mind that begged him not to speak. The look on Gojyo’s face definitely said as much. But the words came pouring out anyway.

“Oh, you know – people who abandon innocent children.”

Gojyo dropped his beer. Hakkai actually flinched when it hit the floor, sending dark shards of glass, gold liquid and white foam in a wide spray that splashed Hakkai’s pant-leg and soaked Dokugakuji’s socks. Chairs skittered across the floor, Gojyo grabbed a dish rag, Dokugakuji peeled off his socks and hop-stepped towards the door, muttering something about having to go; Gojyo was too preoccupied to try and stop him and Hakkai couldn’t bring himself to do it in his place. He sat there, with a puddle of cool beer creeping over the floorboards towards his toes and tried to make sense of his own anger.

“What the fuck Hakkai?” Gojyo ground out as the latch on the door clicked into place. The smell of beer tickled Hakkai’s nostrils and made him faintly dizzy, “What – The – Fuck?”

He didn’t know, honestly. The swell of anger seemed to have come completely unbidden, and now that it had passed, he could remember nothing of it, like an out of body experience.

“If you had a fucking problem with him being here, you should have said something.”

But he hadn’t really minded. Or at least he hadn’t thought he minded until that exact instant when something in Dokugakuji’s innocently-meant story had opened up a strange blackness in his heart where he had tramped down a dizzying multitude of dark feelings. He wasn’t sure he was even ashamed of what had been uncovered; after all, he cared deeply for Gojyo, and what had been done to him was _wrong_ \- thoroughly unjust in a way only real life could be.

“Gojyo I...”

“No,” Gojyo didn’t even give him time to draw another breath, and didn’t look at him as he dumped the last heavy shards of broken glass into the trash, “I know what you’re going to say Hakkai, and I don’t want to hear it. As fucking noble or whatever you think you’re being you had no god damn right Hakkai – I just want my brother back, is that too much to ask?”

* * *

Hakkai lay awake for a long time that night, feeling the couch springs digging into the small of his back and watching the moonlight play against the ceiling. Gojyo hadn’t asked him to sleep there, hadn’t even gone so far as to imply that he should, but Hakkai didn’t feel right lying next to him after what had happened.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, it began to make sense. For Gojyo, it wasn’t a matter of forgiveness, regardless of how easy or difficult it might be; it was a matter of a pure and desperate need to reconnect with the last remaining trace of his past, with the first person who had loved him.

And Hakkai didn’t doubt that, really, looking deep inside himself. You really could see a man’s soul in his eyes, and despite everything, Dokugakuji had a good soul, a loving heart.

He was Gojyo’s brother after all.

If eyes showed the soul, Hakkai wondered briefly what that meant for him. What could be seen looking into his eyes, or looking out from behind them?

Hakkai sat up, pushing aside the heavy, knitted blanket. He felt a tiny spark of desire to fold it and put it properly away, but he ignored it. For all he knew, he would be coming back to it right away anyhow.

Gojyo lay in bed, cocooned in the blankets, curled in on himself like a child, his back to the door. Watching him from the doorway Hakkai could tell that the other man wasn’t asleep – at least not completely. He was about to go back to the couch when Gojyo finally spoke.

“Were you planning to stay there all night?”

Hakkai felt his face go hot, “No.”

Gojyo shifted, moving towards the side of the bed that was normally Hakkai’s, “Then get in here already.”

The sheets were warm with Gojyo’s trapped body heat. Hakkai slipped carefully under the covers and brought himself flush to Gojyo’s back, sliding his arm around Gojyo’s chest and pressing his chin to the other man’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry you know.”

“Yeah man, I know.”

Somehow, he wanted Gojyo to be angry with him still. But that wasn’t really in Gojyo’s nature. He would forgive almost anything if given half a reason. The world held too much against him simply for existing for him to bother with holding anything against anyone else. He had had more than enough of grudges in his alarmingly short lifetime.

“I will have to do something to make it up to your brother, don’t you think?”

“Might be a good plan, yeah,” Gojyo paused, and Hakkai could almost hear him thinking. “You know...that’s the first time you’ve called him my brother, I think.”

Hakkai licked his lips nervously and laughed, “Well, he is, isn’t he? For all his failings. And he loves you a great deal.”

“Yeah,” Gojyo said after a long pause, “I guess.”

“Gojyo...” Hakkai pushed up on his elbow and leaned over, trying to get a clear look at Gojyo’s face. He almost said ‘who couldn’t love you?’ but realized that such words probably represented a tactical error on his part. He drew the curtain of crimson hair away from Gojyo’s face and traced one finger over the scars below his eye, offering as something of a consolation, “I love you a great deal, for all my failings.”

He felt the muscles in Gojyo’s cheek shift, betraying his smile, “That I might believe.”

“Might?”

“I could use a little convincing.”

For a moment, Hakkai held his breath. He almost wanted to refuse because it seemed to him a little like plugging a leak in a dam with chewing gum rather than getting to the heart of the problem. But Gojyo was not the sort to be comforted by words alone; he had spent far too much of his life learning to let such formless things roll off his back like water. He preferred the tactile, the concrete – come and sweat, tears, even blood if Hakkai would allow it; fingers, lips, teeth and tongue – Gojyo wanted love written all across his body so that he could look in the mirror and see it later and be comforted.

Hakkai tugged at Gojyo’s hip, turning him over onto his back and straddled his thighs, pressing their lips together. Gojyo wanted nothing chaste; he opened his mouth eagerly and coaxed Hakkai’s tongue inside with his own. He had gone to bed wearing only boxers, and his erection rubbed obviously against Hakkai’s hip through his jeans.

“Hakkai – please – c’mon...”

“Shhh...” Hakkai stroked his face gently, kissed along his cheekbone with its sharp, precise marks, ignoring the hands that worked at the front of his pants, wiggling the button free and pushing past the zipper to stroke him through the front of his underwear rather inelegantly but with great enthusiasm.

“You gotta – please man, hurry.”

He didn’t want to hurry, particularly, but Gojyo’s hands, no matter how inelegant, had a way of undoing him, and under Gojyo’s desperate crimson gaze he shucked the rest of his clothing, discarding it over the side of the bed, and reached for the tube of lubricant on the bedside table.

When Hakkai pushed the first finger in, Gojyo made a sound he couldn’t clearly identify – some heady mix of pain, pleasure, desire and relief – and pushed down on the invading digit. The silky-hot fabric of his welcoming insides fluttered and pulsed around Hakkai’s fingers, stretching to accommodate two and then three without complaint.

Despite what he would have liked to have everyone believe, Gojyo was not a god among lovers; at least, not in the conventional sense. It was not his skill, but his honesty in the act of making love that made him captivating. When he arched his back against the mattress, clutched at Hakkai’s shoulders and moaned _”Oh Hakkai, that’s **good**”_ he meant it with every ounce of his being. He opened himself body and soul to Hakkai with more trust than Hakkai was certain he really had right to, and he believed completely that Hakkai would return the favour.

Hakkai did; as a matter of desire as much as principle, thrusting deep inside a body that he was sure would happily have swallowed him up, as slow and deep as he could bear to maximize every sensation, until Gojyo was plaint and shaking and slick with his own come.

Gojyo slept immediately afterwards, which Hakkai hardly minded. Although Gojyo would probably feel somewhat badly about it in the morning, Hakkai was simply thankful it was peaceful and dreamless, that Gojyo slept as a child sleeps when he knows he is loved.

-End-


End file.
